Compare Housing Costs In Different Cities
Here’s a good site for Realtors or others looking to compare housing costs in different states and communities.

Bank Failure #126 of 2010
Haven Trust Bank Florida (FL) was closed by the Florida Office of Financial Regulation, the FDIC was appointed the receiver, and First Southern Bank (FL) will assume its deposits. Kitty-corner in the country, in Washington, North County Bank was closed and its deposits taken over by Whidbey Island Bank.

Do Taxpayers Pay For Recent Credit Union Troubles?
Credit unions, who usually don’t make headline news, certainly received some press late last week. The National Credit Union Administration & regulators seized three undercapitalized wholesale credit unions Friday, but the credit union industry, not taxpayers, will bear the cost, estimated at more than $7 billion, of the new conservatorships—wholesale CU’s deal with other credit unions, not with the general public. The NCUA announced that credit unions in the U.S. may absorb as much as $9.2 billion in losses over the next decade, due to bad real estate and consumer loans. NCUA, which insures accounts for 90 million credit union members, will be packaging $50 billion in distressed securities for sale. Only two credit unions were seized in 2009: U.S. Central Federal Credit Union (KS) and Western Corporate Federal Credit Union (CA). To help fund the rescue, the National Credit Union Administration plans to issue $30 billion to $35 billion in government-guaranteed bonds, backed by mortgage-related assets.

How Will Mortgage Bonds Be Rated?
It is hard to jump start securitizing jumbo or Alt-A loans if investors don’t have comfort about how safe the securities are. And the primary rating agencies (Moody’s, S&P, and Fitch) “dropped the ball” on MBS’s in recent years. Unfortunately it has come to light that a section of the recently enacted Dodd-Frank Act is delaying U.S. implementation of international rules for how much capital banks need to hold against securitized assets. It requires regulators to remove all references to credit ratings of securities from their rules, but revised standards on how much capital banks need to hold against such assets in their trading books, approved by the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision (made up of 27 countries, and which sets capital and liquidity requirements for banks worldwide) in 2009, rely on such ratings. That means the U.S. will have to develop another mechanism besides the rating agencies. Put another way, Basel III is a guide for international investors on financial regulation, and the language in Dodd-Frank makes implementing Basel III here more complicated than in other countries.